In a world that demands we keep moving, Amma Abena is asking us to pause and consider: where exactly are we paddling to?
Her sophomore EP, Paddle to Your Resting Place, is a seven-track exploration of the questions that have been consuming her lately: where we’re going, why we’re going, and whether we should be going at all.
These aren’t new questions, but in Amma’s hands, they feel urgent, cyclical, inescapable. The project is less about providing answers and more about sitting with the uncomfortable truth that many of us are simply caught somewhere between the madness and beauty of existence.
Running Toward Something We Can’t Name
The EP opens with “Warrior, Run!” and immediately sets the tone with a single, devastating line: “If heaven doesn’t accept me, just know that I tried.” It’s the sound of someone standing at a starting line; new shoes, trembling legs, equal parts terror and faith.
There’s no going back. All that exists is the race ahead and a voice chanting RUN… RUN… RUN. It’s a fight for survival, a sprint toward a vision we can’t fully see but know we can’t abandon. The haunting question lingers: what becomes of us if we don’t reach home?
That internal battle spills outward in “How Does It Feel?” where Amma confronts abandonment from two angles: those who disappeared without warning, and the ways we’ve abandoned our own inner child. The anger is palpable, the disappointment sharp.
But beneath the rage is something more painful: the realization that we often feed our stomachs while starving our souls, running from what we should face toward what only sustains us physically.
Finding Relief in the Dance
“The Night Is Alive” offers the first real breath of relief. It’s an invitation to let go, a gentle seduction that reminds us worries can be left on the dance floor because there’s no room for regret. For a moment, the weight lifts. There’s permission here to simply be, even if just for tonight.
But morning always comes. “My Time Will Come (Tomorrow)” wrestles with the doubt that arrives with daylight, transforming it into something resembling hope. Even when life feels relentless, we find our way back to center, to belief. The song serves as both an anthem and a prayer: “Pray for peace in this season, that your heart and mind and soul will be in unison.”
The Extremes of Being Alive
“I Laugh, I Cry” captures the emotional whiplash of existence. One moment we’re grateful, the next we’re barely holding on. The extremes are exhausting, splendid, and broken, often within the same breath. “Sometimes I’m grateful, sometimes I’m dead. Goddamn!” It’s honest in a way that aches, acknowledging that we can’t always control how our hearts receive what life throws at us.
“Suwe” brings a different kind of acceptance. Life blows in whatever direction it chooses; unfair, unkind, indifferent to our plans. But there’s something almost peaceful in acknowledging this, in understanding that sometimes that’s simply how the cookie crumbles. The beauty isn’t in the fairness; it’s in the knowing.
Full Circle
The EP closes with “Suzy, Selah!”, a full-circle moment. From ashes we came, to ashes we return. Nothing is guaranteed, no matter what we achieve or accumulate. It’s both the beginning and the end, a reminder to pause (Selah) and reflect on the impermanence of it all.
Paddle to Your Resting Place doesn’t offer easy answers about where we’re going or why.
Instead, it sits with the questions, with the running and the resting, the laughing and the crying. Amma Abena has documented the journey with unflinching honesty, naming the madness and the beauty in equal measure.
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